College can be hard. It can be rough the first few days of classes for an incoming Freshman. You have the task of finding classes, meeting new people, and the other facets of decorum that are required of a new student in college. I was a member of the colorguard and had been on the campus a couple of weeks before the rest of the student body moved into the dorms on campus. With the campus map in hand and memorized, I was ready to take on my first day of classes.

I woke up that morning a little slow, but I was determined to have the breakfast of champions. I got dressed, slung my heavy backpack over my shoulders, and walked out the door. My parents bought me a brand new bike a month before I moved into my dorm. It was red mountain bike with gear speeds, so biking uphill wouldn’t be an issue. There was about two and a half hours of riding time that I had put into it.

I start biking towards the dining hall and had to cross a section of the parking lot that ran parallel to a road. When crossing the parking lot I checked to see if any oncoming traffic had a indicated they were turning via a blinker. With no blinker in sight I continued to cross the parking lot. In a moment I was on my bike, the next I was on the ground. I was struck by a Dodge Charger that had turned into the parking lot. I rolled over the top of the car and was thrown five feet past the impact point. My back had hit the ground first and if it weren’t for my backpack I would have hit my head on the concrete. A nursing student who was behind the driver that hit me ran to my side and helped me sit up. The driver ran out of the car apologizing and saying “I didn’t see you, I’m so sorry.” All I could feel was a sharp pain in my right foot and the sting of road rash.

Basic protocol took place. An ambulance was called, they picked me up and I was driven to the hospital. After the x-ray they found that I had fractured a joint in my foot and a tendon was wrapped in the fracture. They placed me under to fix the joint and I woke up with purple toes sticking out of a foot cast. Luckily the first day of classes was on a Friday, so my mother drove to the campus to bring me home for the weekend. I insisted that I go back to the camus Sunday night, so I could go to the classes that I missed.

There was no way I’d be able to hobble to all of my classes on crutches on such a large campus. How did I solve the issue of mobility? A hover round. That’s right for the next 4 months of my first semester of my freshman year, a hover round was my only to traverse campus. I had to make sure the battery was charged every night, be sure to secure a spot in classes close to an outlet and avoid any steep inclines.

Needless to say the first semester of my freshman year of college started out with the kind of excitement I didn’t expect.